We are holding a conference for the 50 participants in the trial at the end of November. We have some results in but are still waiting for many to be submitted by the growers, we have allowed growers to concentrate on their autumn workload but would appreciate anyone who has not yet submitted their results to do so on the first wet day available. We would like to present to each grower a report about their trial at the conference, so we don't really want to steal anyone's thunder by announcing the results now. Be assured there will be plenty of commentary once the conference has been held.

Oh my days, I'm afraid that article scanned about as well as a Donald Trump speech.

The take home message:

The overall results are a draw, reports Ben. “We received harvest data from 40 growers. For 18 of these, the BASF Ad/Lib programme produced a positive result, averaging 0.52t/ha. But 22 growers achieved a better result from the competitor programme, averaging 0.41t/ha difference.”
​

BASF performed worse than the competition. I bet if it was 22 to 18 in BASF's favour they wouldn't call it a draw!

And I really struggle to get my head around it. They say that small plot trials are prone to variation in the field, despite replicated and randomised trial plots specifically being designed to overcome these variations. Then they say:

When the yield data comes in, there’s a certain amount of cleaning to be done. “We take off headlands and end of runs. Areas that aren’t even shouldn’t be counted. The software picks up data points that are dramatically different, and an offset correction is applied.”
​

Which just undoes their whole point? Surely "real field scale results" includes all the crappy headlands and gauze?

They do seem to have lost 10 from the original 50 for some reason which is not really explained.
18-32 could be the real score.

I do agree well done BASF for even trying something like this.
I would love to know what causes these variations.
If the chemicals are approximately equal then there must be another variable which can give 0.5 tonnes/ha
Not that many variables left
Same sprayer, same farm, same field.

Could it be water quality?
Time of day sprayed?
Timing between T1 and T2?

They do seem to have lost 10 from the original 50 for some reason which is not really explained.
18-32 could be the real score.

I do agree well done BASF for even trying something like this.
I would love to know what causes these variations.
If the chemicals are approximately equal then there must be another variable which can give 0.5 tonnes/ha
Not that many variables left
Same sprayer, same farm, same field.

Could it be water quality?
Time of day sprayed?
Timing between T1 and T2?

Click to expand...

But maybe the variable is not down to the chemical? Given that it only did better 50% of the time id say there was no statistical difference, certainly nothing good enough to wheel out Clive again next spring. But that said its as good as anything else if its cheap enough.